Review: I Don’t Need No Doctor For This Rhythm Heaven Fever

In one of the first musical mini-games you play in Rhythm Heaven Fever, you’re on a romantic date and must kick away a series of footballs that are on a collision course with some nearby cartoon weasels. Fail to kick a ball away to the rhythm of the music and the furry critters get a pigskin to the face. Every person I showed this to almost died laughing at the way the weasels’ heads snap back with an alarming smack on impact.

This under-the-radar Nintendo series, each of which features a variety of challenging but hilarious rhythmic exercises, has heretofore only existed on portable platforms. Rhythm Heaven Fever, to be released for Wii on Feb. 13, is the first to be played on a television.

That’s a more significant improvement than you might think. One of the game’s major strengths is its hilarious visual comedy, and putting the action on the living-room TV allows a group of people to see just how much fun it is. Even if you’re not the one playing, the constant barrage of oddball antics are instantly inviting and attention grabbing.

It’s a good thing Rhythm Heaven Fever is so fun to just watch, because it can be seriously difficult to play. If you want to have the proper rhythm necessary to excel at the game, you need to either be a musician (not me) or spend hours every day listening to a wide variety of music (definitely me).

This isn’t Rock Band, where the entire series of notes that you need to play scrolls down on the screen in perfect lockstep timing. Here, there often are no graphical indicators of when to press buttons; your only guide is the beat of the music.

The game’s criteria for letting you progress from one game to the next can be frustratingly strict, too. I frequently had moments where I felt I performed almost perfectly, only to be told to try again. And again.

It’s doubly annoying when there’s no easy to way to restart when you know you’re doing particularly badly. Instead you have to pause, quit to the main menu, select your game and wait through the brief intro sequence that accompanies each one.

Fortunately, the game allows you to skip any mini-game that you’re stuck on, but only after hitting your head against the wall several times. At that point the brain damage has been done.

While Rhythm Heaven‘s games can be difficult, it’s never the fault of the control scheme.
Everything you do — whether you’re controlling a migrating group of flamingos or screwing the heads onto a conveyor belt line of robots — is performed by either pressing the A button on the Wiimote, or pressing A and B at the same time by pinching your fingers together. It’s a big improvement from the DS game, which implemented touch-screen controls that felt somewhat sloppy and imprecise.

There’s an addictive quality, too, thanks to the simple mechanics and the variety of the minigames. You’re bound to have quite a few favorites that you keep returning to long after mastering them, just so you can play them again and listen to the music.

Rhythm Heaven Fever boasts a staggeringly extensive soundtrack of catchy tunes covering an array of different genres, from head-pounding rock to way-too-sweet pop, everything with a distinct Japanese style. Kicking back and listening to the music is the single biggest stress reliever when you’re getting frustrated by the high difficulty.

And if that doesn’t help, you can always get your catharsis by sitting back and watch somebody else smack weasels in the face with footballs.